So out of all of Adam Sandler’s movies, this is one of the less horrible ones. Though saying that is kind of like looking at your fridge of all expired food and saying, “well that one didn’t taste AS bad as the others… It wasn’t good though.”.

So the premise of this movie is a bit ridiculous. It’s about Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore starring in their third romantic comedy together as a widow and a divorcee respectively who end up falling for each other on an African safari. I had seen the trailer for this movie a while back and thought, oh great another piece of Adam Sandler’s garbage is about to be tossed directly into Auditorium 4 at my local theater… While the movie is really horrible, you gotta give it a couple points for effort.

And the effort is really what counts here! I’ve seen Billy Madison and part of Happy Gilmore, and I was not the biggest fan of either. In my opinion, the closest Adam Sandler has come to a good movie is Click and Bedtime Stories in that order. But at this stage of the game, we’ve passed those two and, well… Jack and Jill happened! And Grown Ups 2 happened! And That’s My Boy happened! It’s at the point where Adam Sandler sends out a group message to all of his friends and says, I could use another paycheck, and I had this great idea 4 drinks in last night. Let’s get the camera! At this point, after all of those atrocities, you can at least tell with this movie that Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore are putting in the effort. Even the awful kid actors are trying hard. And I have to cut the movie some slack for that.

The first real problem is who doesn’t have to cut it slack, in other terms: who’s the target audience here? I mean the movie feels like it’s trying to do a PG rating for the family aspect, yet there are blatant cursing and adult jokes in there to give it a PG-13 rating. And if you think that’s to get teenagers into seats with their families and laugh, I’ll tell you as a teenager, I would never see this movie with my parents. It’s stupid kid humor crossed with really out-of-place Adam Sandler dirty humor. (That and the movie’s horrible.) I actually came up with a way to describe Adam Sandler movies to people last year after I saw Grown Ups 2. It’s a kids movie, that is not made for kids. It’s just there as random, ambient entertainment to keep you busy while your parents are working in the garden or something. Only the target audience of Grown Ups 2 was not kids, they were teenagers and young adults who were either really dumb and didn’t notice or actually saw through it. The same thing is true here. If families with like 9 year-olds see this, the kids could be entertained because they’re kids, but the parents and older siblings will be bored of their God-forsaken heads since they realize that it’s just there to play something in Auditorium 18 after Neighbors leaves the cinema.

But then the next bit of what just dis-credits this movie and really the cast at large is the cameos. Like I said, it’s pretty obvious that Adam Sandler is just casting his friends in these things now, but he can at least change it up every now and again. Like Shaq is in the movie. Why does Shaq need to be in the movie? Spoiler Alert! If you’re really clicking away right now, then don’t even come back because you should not care about this piece of royal garbage. So this is Shaq’s role in the movie, precisely: he is Adam Sandler’s co-worker at Dick’s Sporting Goods (I’ll get to that), and he makes a belly-dancing joke. THAT IS HIS ROLE IN THIS MOVIE. Yeah pretty stupid right? Right! And then Joel McHale is in the movie. Jeff Winger? What are you doing man! C’mon! And he basically plays his same character from Ted, only divorced after an affair. Man I feel bad… But also being cast in this movie is: Dick’s Sporting Goods, Hooters, CVS and more I don’t care to list off. I knew this guy was desperate for another pay check, but he really has to put all these products in the movie? Granted, it’s not as bad as some other movies of his were on the product-placement front, but it was very annoying still.

Like I said, I do applaud Sandler on the obvious effort for this one, and that effort and the whole heart of the movie does make it less atrocious. I mean Jack and Jill is sloppy and wasn’t even a real production, but this they at least put in time and some kind of budget for. I guess for that, I gotta give Sandler some credit. Two Out of Five Stars.

So yes in a fridge full of long-expired food there are always a couple that aren’t as bad as the others, but whether they’re better or worse expirations doesn’t really matter: you gotta clean out the fridge anyway.

***

So guys those are my thoughts on Blended. Not recommended, but if you did see it what did you think? And also I’m considering adding a rating to the end of each review, but I’m hesitant people won’t read the full review… What do you guys think, keep it or no? Whatever those answers may be, let me know down below and as always, thanks for reading guys.